The best of Chinese singers, dancers and acrobats will join the second "Meet in Beijing Arts Festival" in a special variety show at the Great Hall of the People on April 25.

The month-long festival will present audiences with excellent performances by artists from home and abroad.

The Chinese artists at the special gala show are all winners of various international awards during the past few years. As Xing Dehui, director of the performance, said, the show is arguably the largest of its kind in nearly two decades.

As the curtains are raised, all the performers will step onto the stage with their certificates, cups or medals to the crescendo of music.

The show consists of two parts.

The first part includes ballet pieces, selected parts of operas, modern dance, pop songs and acrobatics.

The second part is more like a concert. Tenors, sopranos, pianists and violinists will perform accompanied by the China National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Li Xincao.

In the past two decades, the accomplishments of Chinese artists have drawn worldwide attention.

A great number of artists and artistic teams have won various awards in international festivals and competitions.

The perseverance of these artists in the pursuit of art and traditional culture has impressed people from all over the world.

However, the Chinese public is not sufficiently aware of their accomplishments.

In China, if an athlete wins a gold medal or breaks a record in an international competition, the whole country celebrates and the athlete becomes a star.

But the tenors, sopranos, pianists and ballerinas who have also won honor for the nation have not received the same kind of attention.

Wu Zuqiang, a noted composer and former president of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing said: "Like athletes, artists also devote great time and energy to their careers. What's more, their achievements reflect the nation's artistic and cultural level, economic standard as well as people's energy and wisdom."

As such, the coming variety show will offer a rare chance to get to know about the achievements of China's award-winning artists, who will share their creative works and their ideas with the public.

Last year's Frederic Chopin Piano Competition made 18-year-old Li Yundi famous. But Li is not the only one who should be noticed.

Ju Jin, 23, another eye-catching star on the international stage in 2000, will play Tchaikovsky's "No 1 Piano Concerto in B Minor" during the show.

Early last year, she won third prize in the ninth Unisa International Piano Competition in South Africa.

Following that, she won first prize at the first Theodore Leschetizky International Piano Competition in Taipei.

Ju said: "My successes in competition made me feel more confident in my ability and skills; on the other hand, they let me gain more experience."

The competitions made her known across the world and she was immediately invited to give concerts abroad.

Ju, a graduate student in the Central Conservatory of Music, is now planning to make her own records.

Opera singers will charm the audience with their mellow or sonorous voices during the show.

Soprano Ma Mei, who won first prize at the Miami International Opera Competition in 1997, said: "As far as our skills and timbre are concerned, we are not at all at a disadvantage compared with Western singers.

"For us Chinese singers, our biggest problem is language, which sometimes limits our expression."

But through hard training, they have overcome language barriers and sailed into the finals of many an international competition.

Ma also said that she and some other opera singers have organized a salon called "Sounds of Wishes" to introduce Western opera to common people.

Tenor Jin Yongzhe, who will also sing at the performance, is one of the members of the salon.

In 1996, he won first prize at the Bilbao International Vocal Competition in Spain and second prize at the Paris International Vocal Competition.

Jin is now a teacher at the Conservatory of Chinese Music. Asked about his career, he said: "Although I cannot give as many solo concerts as a professional singer does, I enjoy teaching my students and seeing them develop."

The only pop singers in the performance will be Ye Fan, Tan Jin and Sun Jie, all of whom have won prizes at the "Sounds of Asia" Pop Music Festival in Kazakhstan.

Ye attended the festival in 1996. Regarding the awards, she said: "Although I felt proud of winning the prize, I considered the festival more as an opportunity to communicate with pop singers from other countries and learn from them."

She said that pop music in China was just in its initial stages.

When Tan won the award in 1998, she also thought Chinese pop music still had a long way to go.

By 2000, when Sun Jie won the award, it was agreed that Chinese pop music had reached international standards.

All of them believe it is better to blend traditional Chinese music with pop music to get an original sound.

In fact, these three singers all studied folk music before they started to sing pop songs.

According to the organizers and officials from the Ministry of Culture, it was difficult to invite all China's prize winners to attend the performance.

They will arrange more chances for these artists to perform so that the public will be able to get to know them better.

(China Daily 04/20/2001)